Keyboard Shortcuts To Close & Open CD/DVD Tray In Windows 10

Most of the personal computers available in the market today don’t include an optical drive or popularly known as CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive. Now that USB drives and external hard drives are available for throwaway prices, most users prefer using USB drives instead of traditional CD/DVDs to backup and transfer data.

That said, there are many PCs out there that still include CD/DVD drive. If your notebook has an optical drive and you’re running Windows 10, Windows 8 or Windows 7, you probably have observed that Windows doesn’t provide an option to close the optical drive tray while it does provide an option to eject the drive.

Create hotkey to close & open CD/DVD drive tray in Windows 10

In short, while you can open the optical drive tray with a click, it’s not possible to close the CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive tray without physically pushing the tray. It could be because neither Microsoft nor developers interested in optical drives anymore.

Luckily, if you’re still use CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive in your Windows PC very often, here are two small utilities to help you quickly eject and close CD/DVD drive tray using keyboard shortcuts.

Door Control

Door Control, as the name might suggest, helps you control the door of the CD/DVD drive right from the desktop. The tool helps you eject and close CD/DVD/Blu-ray with the help of keyboard shortcuts as well as via system tray shortcut.

Upon installing and running Door Control, the program sits in the system tray area of the taskbar. To enable keyboard shortcuts for close and eject operations, right-click on Door Control’s tray icon, and click Hot Key to open the Door Control Hotkey dialog. Select one of the pre-listed hotkeys and then click OK button.

Although Door Control is a good utility, the software doesn’t seem to work with some drives and PCs. While the utility on my HP laptop running Windows 10, the program failed to close the Sony DVD drive tray on my assembled desktop PC.

NirCMD

If the Door Control software is not working on your PC, you may try NirCMD solution from the popular NirSoft.

Step 1: Download NirCMD utility by clicking here. Extract the NirCMD contents to the root of your Windows 10 drive (the folder that appears when you double-click on the drive icon).